HUFFINGTON POST: The Bustan Rotana Hotel, until a month ago, was known among Dubai residents as a destination for good sushi and old fashioned entertainment. It was the quiet yet classy option; an old gem mingling with a plethora of newer glitzy caravanserais. Then, Mahmoud al Mabhouh [pictured, right], the senior Hamas military commander complicit in the kidnapping of Israeli soldiers and instrumental in maintaining a flow of weapons to Hamas in the Gaza Strip, decided to use it as a stop-over. So did a team of assassins [pictured, above]who collaboratively pulled off perhaps the most clinical murder Dubai has ever had the umbrage of witnessing on its turf. Al Mabhouh’s actual method of death is unclear. He was either electrocuted, poisoned, strangulated or suffocated. Any permutation or combination of the above. The UAE authorities have little doubt of the identity of the assassins though. Daily newspaper The National quoted Dubai Police flatly noting the political assassination was carried out to a “Mossad method”. Days later, the 
Dubai police showed CCTV footage of the members of the hit team. Al Mabouh was a dead man from the time he entered Dubai on Emirates flight EK912. He was tailed from the airport to the hotel and even up to his room by hit men alternately clad in tourist casuals or tennis whites. One member booked a room right opposite his at the Bustan Rotana, while others acted in various capacities. If nothing else, the operation was clinical. By the time Al Mabouh was discovered in the confines of room 230, the hit squad had long left town. MORE